


The Never Coming Back

by kyaticlikestea



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feels, John-centric, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Reichenbach, author is a horrible bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyaticlikestea/pseuds/kyaticlikestea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in and out of 221B post-Reichenbach is just months since and months until.<br/>Time passes. John lives. Sherlock doesn't come back.</p><p>
  <i>You have the sympathy cards sent to the flat. You don’t know if Mrs Hudson reads them before she arranges them on the mantelpiece, the image of the skull and the scrawled sorrow resembling some sort of grotesquely inappropriate mausoleum. He would have hated it, of course. Too sentimental. For this reason, you’ve refused the flowers that the Yard sent. No, you don’t know if Mrs Hudson has taken comfort from the cards that you can’t. You haven’t returned to the flat in six weeks. It’s been seven.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Never Coming Back

It’s a dull ache at first. That surprises you; grief is usually sharp at the onset, enough to leave you breathless and retching, a knife in the lungs and needles in the heart. But not this time. This time, it’s a bruised muscle, a psychosomatic limp. It’s a hundred sympathy cards that you can’t read because it’s not real. It’s not. How can it be? The whole situation is a Shakespearean tragedy or a black comedy. It’s not _real_.

You have the sympathy cards sent to the flat. You don’t know if Mrs Hudson reads them before she arranges them on the mantelpiece, the image of the skull and the scrawled sorrow resembling some sort of grotesquely inappropriate mausoleum. He would have hated it, of course. Too sentimental. For this reason, you’ve refused the flowers that the Yard sent. No, you don’t know if Mrs Hudson has taken comfort from the cards that you can’t. You haven’t returned to the flat in six weeks. It’s been seven.

Harry lets you stay at her flat. Of course she does. You let her sleep on your sofa for five days when Clara first left her and you drove her to her AA appointments when her driving license was revoked. She opens the door to you with a sad sort of half-smile. She hasn’t seen you in a month. You haven’t called in three.  
“I’m so, so sorry,” is the first thing she says when you step inside her apartment – too brightly lit, too beige, not enough severed fingers in the fridge – and she is sorry. She’s sorry enough that she pours you a glass of red wine at dinner and only drinks three herself. She’s sorry enough that she almost doesn’t forget to hand you a blanket from the cupboard in the spare room because she hasn’t fixed the heating. You smile tiredly at her when she hugs you goodnight and tells you it’ll do you good to get out of ‘that awful place’. She leaves you with an aspirin because hangovers? She can deal with those. You’d do the same for her.

The cards stopped arriving after eight months, says Mrs Hudson.  
“Did you keep them all?” you ask. The cafe is almost empty and if you listen hard enough you swear you can hear the clock upstairs in 221B, announcing that it’s been closer to nine months than eight. Mrs Hudson chews on a hangnail on her left hand and cups her mug of tea. It’s cold in here.  
“I couldn’t bear to, dear,” she replies after a few moments. You nod, slowly. You don’t know who wrote the most genuine letter of regret. You don’t even know who wrote them. Did he have schoolfriends? Distant relatives? Old girlfriends? Boyfriends? You won’t know now.  
“That’s OK,” you say. You think you sound light-hearted. You hope so.  
Mrs Hudson sighs.  
“You do understand, don’t you?” she says, taking a sip of tea. “I mean, I know it’s been months – not far off a year, can you believe it? - but it was like a shrine up there, and - ”  
“I understand,” you interject.  
You wouldn’t have read them anyway.

Lestrade gives you the key to his spare room on the anniversary. He looks around at the room apologetically.  
“I’m sorry it’s not much,” he says. “But it should do. You’re welcome to use all the other rooms, obviously. Not mine, though.” He blushes, scratches the back of his neck, and you briefly find yourself wondering if he’s going to try and fuck you. The thought is so explicit, so spontaneous, that you find yourself physically recoiling from him. He raises an eyebrow. He always liked Sherlock, you know. Always ranted and raved about the cut of his coat when he was drunk. You’re the last thing left of Sherlock now. You’re the next best thing, the closest second. He’s going to try and sleep with you.  
Lestrade furrows his brow.  
“I’ll let you settle in.”  
He closes the door behind him, and you sit on the bed. Why did you think that?  
He doesn’t try anything, of course, and you wonder when you started thinking of yourself as the other half to Sherlock’s whole.

You meet Daisy at the clinic, of all places. Since Sarah gave you back your old job, a lot has changed. Doctor Singh has been placed on medical leave. Sarah says he put his hand through a window after his wife died. Nurse Winston has eloped with Nurse Liese. Jane, the receptionist, is due to give birth to her second child in four months. Daisy is covering for her while she’s on maternity leave.  
Daisy is about two inches shorter than you, with dark brown hair and a laugh like bells. You take her to Angelo’s for your first date and he gives you the table by the window, the one with the candle. She eats all her food and most of yours and lets you hold her hand on the way home. It’s strangely intimate and naive until you get back to the flat and realise you’re standing on the doorstep of 221B. You freeze. She looks at you, concerned, and you toy with telling her something about how you used to live here before you had to find somewhere cheaper.  
You tell her the truth. She listens carefully and, when you’ve finished, she takes you home. You sleep in her bed.  
She has grey-green eyes.

It’s been almost two years since you last went to the pub with Mike. It feels alien now. A group of men are playing pool in the corner. Two of them are sleeping with each other. Another is having an affair with his friend’s wife – no, there’s no ring, it’s his girlfriend. You smile. Sherlock would have deduced all that in milliseconds. It’s taken you two hours.  
Mike is married now. He has a son, James, and a mortgage. You are living with a man you share nothing with but a ghost. It’s been nineteen months, three weeks and four days since Sherlock. You tell this to Mike. He sighs and raises his glass in an approximation of a toast.  
“He was a great man,” he says. You shake your head.  
“No,” you say, raising your glass too. “He was a good one.”

“I’m going to rent out the flat again,” Mrs Hudson says. She walks over to the couch furthest away from the door and prods it distastefully. Lestrade isn’t fond of hoovering. You swallow, hard.  
“Don’t,” you say. She looks at you.  
“I can’t afford to keep it up, dear,” she explains. She sighs and sits down on the dusty sofa. “I know it’s hard for you, love, but Sherlock doesn’t live there anymore. No-one does. It’s time to let it out again.”  
You take a deep breath in. It’s been twenty-one months. You’ve had a pay rise. Daisy likes that part of London.  
“I’ll rent it,” you say.

Mycroft visits every week, right up until the second anniversary of his brother’s suicide. He brings the same thing to every meeting; a box of Whittards loose tea (usually English Breakfast, but when the six-month markers roll around, he’ll switch to Assam) and a newspaper. You don’t read the news otherwise. It reminds you too much of when you were the headlines.  
He doesn’t bring either the last time he visits. Instead, he brings a sympathy card. He smiles, a thin politician’s smile that’s steeped in sadness.  
“I didn’t deliver it before,” he explains. You take it, but don’t open it.  
“Thanks,” you say. He shifts uncomfortably in his expensive shoes.  
“Well,” he says. “Goodbye, John.”  
“Bye.”  
As he leaves, you catch a familiar smell, like dust and last night. You recognise that smell. You hope he and Lestrade are helping one another.

Mike’s wife leaves him. He cries on your sofa all night and you don’t mention it in the morning. Daisy brings you both tea and, when Mike has left, you spend the afternoon watching crap telly and having sex.

Jane’s baby was a boy. He’s in the clinic now, pink and content and four months old. Daisy doesn’t work here anymore. You don’t call Harry.

It’s been twenty-eight months. There was an article last week in the Independent. Some journalist called Daniel Hayes thinks that Richard Brook was a liar. There’s a reprint in today’s paper that apologises to those affected by Sherlock Holmes’ crimes.  
You put the paper down and hide it underneath one of Daisy’s photography magazines. You don’t understand why the headlines still talk about it. Sometimes it hurts, but mostly it doesn’t. You think it hurts more, that. The realisation that you don’t miss him anymore hits harder than the fact that you missed him. You want to feel empty inside. You don’t. Daisy asks you to move your books off the coffee table. You don’t.

Four years ago today, Sherlock blew up the kitchen. It had been an accident – an experiment, he’d said – but you’d been cleaning up bits of liquefied eyeball from under the microwave for weeks.  
Daisy is clean and tidy and neat as a pin and you haven’t had to so much as scrub a surface in months.  
You miss the eyeballs.

Harry relapses. It’s been twenty nine months, two weeks and four days. You want a drink.  
“I’m sorry, you know,” she says when she wakes up.  
“I know,” you say.  
Her eyes are ringed purple and her hair is lank.  
“I’m sorry,” she says again. You sigh.  
“You can stay at mine.” She’d do the same for you.

Daisy doesn’t like the skull. She doesn’t like the letters, pierced through with a knife, or the yellow face on the wall. She’s even less fond of the acid stained rug in the hallway, the charred left cushion of the sofa and the suspicious yellow stain on the hob.  
Harry doesn’t mind it. Neither do you.  
Daisy wants you to mind.

She leaves.  
“I can’t live in a mausoleum,” she cries, packing her bag. She’s lived here for ten months and she only has enough belongings to fill one small suitcase. That should have been a sign, you think.  
“It’s OK,” you say, because it is.  
She held your hand when BBC News 24 ran a special report on bogus geniuses and she went to visit Sherlock’s grave with you once. It’s OK.

Harry moves out on the day that Mrs Hudson goes into hospital. You wave them both off; Harry in the taxi, Mrs Hudson in the ambulance five hours later.  
“I’ll be fine,” they both say.  
You see Harry next week. You don’t see Mrs Hudson again.

The flat is Sherlock’s. You can see that now.  
Three years and two days ago, he set fire to the carpet in your bedroom. It didn’t spread, but there’s a distinct singed area under your bedside cabinet.  
Two years and eleven months ago, he took down all the light fittings for an experiment into optical adjustment. The light above the mirror in the bathroom still crackles.  
Two years, eleven months and sixteen days ago, he closed the front door behind him. You think he left something behind.

It’s been three years. Harry is doing well, thank God. Clara visits her every few weeks. They’re not quite friends, but they’re something. You see Daisy every so often when she covers for Jane at the clinic. It’s not strained, not really. You smile cordially at each other and ask how the other’s doing, and lie that you’re both fine. It’s a comfortable falsehood. Lestrade still smells of Mycroft’s aftershave when you visit him at the pub every Thursday. Mrs Hudson’s brother Jack lives in 221A. He’s a little younger than she was and he wears checkered shirts every day but Sunday.  
The flat is quiet. It’s too quiet. The clock ticks and soon it’ll be three years and one day.  
There’s a knock at the door. You sigh, hauling yourself up from the sofa and reaching for your cane. You open the front door. It’s Jack, wearing a dark grey striped shirt. He looks a little flushed. He has a date, you suppose. He probably wants to borrow a tie.  
“You have a visitor, John,” he says.  
You sigh. It’s nearly eight in the evening and you’re just about to start dinner.  
“Is it important?” you ask.  
Jack bites his lip and looks behind him, down the corridor. It’s too dark to make out who’s standing there, but there’s a definite outline of a figure in the shadows.  
“I think so,” he replies. You sigh again.  
“Well, let them in, then,” you say.  
“I have a key,” says the shadow, and then it’s not a shadow but a ghost and it’s Sherlock and it’s real.

It’s been two weeks.  
“Good morning,” you say. Sherlock looks at you, bleary-eyed and shorter-haired than he was before, still pale and thin but tangled in sheets. He never used to sleep, not really. It’s surprising how much he’s changed but also how much he’s stayed the same.  
You shove the newspaper towards him, excitedly.  
“ _An_ _official apology to Sherlock Holmes_ ,” reads Sherlock. He rolls his eyes. “Obviously. I do hope they’re not expecting an interview. I have three years of cake-related jibes at my brother to make up for.”  
You grin. Today, you have four hours at the clinic. You might call Harry, then. Perhaps you’ll go with Sherlock to the Yard. You wonder if he’ll smell your brother’s cologne in Lestrade’s office. You chastise yourself for wondering. Of course he will.  
“Welcome back,” you say.

 


End file.
